


This Gift

by suitesamba



Series: The "This" Series [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Past John/Mary - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1683011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary visits Sherlock at 221B.</p><p>Part 5 of the "This" series. The series starts with stag night, and goes on with the premise that Mrs. Hudson never interrupted John and Sherlock with the client during the guessing game. Johnlock, with recent past Mary/John. Angst, humor, Sherlock learning the relationship ropes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Gift

**This Gift**

 

Someone is knocking on the door – someone who is not Mrs. Hudson.

Someone Mrs. Hudson trusts, then, to climb the stairs on their own.

Sherlock opens the door to Mary Morstan. She is holding a cardboard banker’s box.

“Peace offering,” she says casually as she steps through the doorway.

“Are we at war?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I told her John’s at work!” Mrs. Hudson’s voice lifts up to them from her doorway below.

“She knows he’s at work,” Sherlock answers, not loud enough for Mrs. Hudson to hear.

Mary rolls her eyes and Sherlock waits while she walks past him, moving to the kitchen table with the familiarity born of frequent visits to the flat. She places the box on the table and settles onto a chair. She makes no move to open the box. 

“You came to see me,” Sherlock states. He glances at the box. “You know John’s at work.” He doesn’t need to state the obvious – they work at the same surgery. They are both privy to the schedule.

“Peace offering, remember?” She taps the box and glances around the flat. Her eyes settle on a pair of John’s trainers pushed up beside his chair.

Social niceties escape Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t offer her tea, or inquire as to her health or happiness. He knows she’s still recoiling from the loss of her fiancé. She’s been surprisingly even-tempered the past week, but he sees now that she hasn’t given up on John yet. She’s only beginning to test the waters, in fact. She looks at Sherlock again (appreciatively, or is he imagining that?) and he recalls John’s comment about _sharing_. 

He sits down opposite her and touches the box. “May I?”

She nods and watches as he lifts the lid.

The box is full of jumpers. John’s jumpers. A collection of ragged, pilled, worn, comfortable jumpers, jumpers John was wearing when he first moved to 221B with Sherlock. Jumpers he was wearing back at Uni, in all probability.

Only yesterday, he was enlisted by John to help carry most of his possessions, moved from the flat he’d shared with Mary, up the stairs and into 221B. 

“John forgot a box,” he says, even though he’s already deduced the matter and knows that this particular box was not forgotten.

She shakes her head. She looks at him expectantly. 

He doesn’t like this game.

“His favorite jumpers,” he says aloud. He reaches into the box and pulls out a familiar one, cable-knit, oatmeal-coloured. “You convinced him to give them up. You bought new - the ones he brought home yesterday.”

He doesn’t stress the word home, but she crinkles her nose all the same.

“Jewel tones. Well-made. More expensive than anything else he owns. Cashmere, fine wool blends.” He folds the jumper he’s holding and replaces it in the box, then stares at Mary pointedly. “I might have let him kiss me years ago if I’d known he’d let me dress him.”

They stare at each other. Point to Sherlock.

“I’ve always known, you know,” she says after a solid minute of uncomfortable, eye-to-eye contact. “How much he fancies you.” She smiles wanly. “It wasn’t as much of a problem when you were dead.”

He is enjoying this pissing match more than he should, yet still he wants it to end. He is uncomfortable with the thought that Mary knew before he did, true as it rings. It reminds him that he wasted too much time and nearly lost everything. John.

_Everything._

“Thank-you for returning the jumpers,” he says. 

He means it. He hates them – they’re dull and bulky and hide the body that should be shown off in well-fitting, tailored button-downs. But he recognizes two things – that Mary took the jumpers but did not destroy them, and that she is giving them now to Sherlock, not John.

The choice is his, and she’ll note his decision.

Keep them and give them back to John, or get rid of the horrid things without John ever knowing.

“This relationship suits you,” Mary says, eying him again as she stands. “You’re practically glowing.”

He scowls at her. Relationship? He doesn’t like her putting a name to this thing before he and John have settled on one.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says as he follows her to the door. “I’ll know if he’s not happy.”

Sherlock stares after her. He has always maintained that he is not and cannot be responsible for anyone’s happiness but his own. 

And in that moment, his world view shifts.


End file.
